Edit Locked

Exacerbating the situation, Mario said, is the seemingly arbitrary placement of the hazards. "I could see why, if you're in a factory, you might find yourself jumping around on dangerous conveyor belts moving in different directions," he said. "But why would you have conveyor belts in a castle? Or in the middle of a forest?"

In Real Life, conveyor belts, escalators, moving walkways and similar conveyances are part of certain specialized environments, and serve the function of moving things in a convenient direction. In video games, conveyor belts can show up anywhere: in the middle of a forest, in underground catacombs, etc. These belts don't move in a logical direction. They carry pedestrians into Spikes of Doom or drop them down Bottomless Pits. Multiple conveyor belts move in opposite directions to trap players.

In short, the conveyor belt in video games often serves the purpose of hindering instead of helping its user.

Blue Dragon has conveyor belt puzzles, in which you will generally need to flip a switch to make them go the opposite direction, since it's not possible to actively move around on them, for some weird reason.

The Castles of Doctor Creep has these as one possible obstacle. Generally you need to find the switch to control them, so that they are stopped or set to go in a certain direction. Sometimes the switch will be impossible to reach, in which case it generally acts as a one-way path (since it's moving too fast to run against; if you try to run against it, you'll slowly get pushed by it toward the end).

Castlevania: Chronicles of Sorrow (Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow) has a habit of taking this trope and laughing at you with it. Conveyor belts are not all too common in the game, but once you meet them (in the clock tower), they make you wish they did not exist. The belts alone are not dangerous, it is the combination of being attacked, risk of getting stoned and landing in a spike pit. Not fun especially since a stoned character takes a crapload of damage from the spike pits. The things return with a vengeance in Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin, and throw in collapsing platforms to make it even worse!

Chip's Challenge: Among the hazards is conveyer belts (known in-game as force floors), frequently leading either backwards in the level, or into another, more fatal hazard. But there's a powerup (suction cup shoes) that lets you negate their effects.

Chrono Trigger has several in the future factories, with limited control over where you can get off. It even works against the villains, as Ozzie discovers when he dumps two mooks on conveyor belts that lead to Bottomless Pits.

The level Frantic Factory in Donkey Kong 64 has conveyor belts in some sections. One of them adds trash compactors as well, so the only one who can go through them is the eponymous character when he's using the invincibility barrel ability.

Gremlins 2: The New Batch for the NES from stage 3-2 to the end. This game used almost every common hazard (except solid clouds) which filled one of the most inhospitable office buildings in the world.

Those who have obsessively played the classic series will think of Knight Man's stage from Mega Man 6 and Proto Man's castle from Mega Man 5, examples of conveyor belts being located in castles. Then again, not much beyond handwaves have ever been given to justify stage layouts in the series.

In Metal Morph, some of the conveyor belts are especially inconvenient in that they occupy the edges of small platforms.

The Arcade GameMirai Ninja takes this to extremes by having one level made almost entirely out of conveyor belt and spinning gear platforms.

Mr. Robot features many of these obstacles around the ship Eidolon. Sometimes they seem to serve a sensible purpose like transporting boxes, but others just...there for the puzzles.

In Rockman 4 Minus Infinity, there are two sections are dedicated to these in Dust Man's level. The first one had debris falling onto it. The second had holes in them; luckily, Eddie points them out to you.

The fourth dungeon in Ōkamiden, the theatrical Playhouse, is filled with conveyor belts marked with arrow symbols colored orange and green. It's impossible to override them.

In Pepsiman, the first part of the Pepsi Factory area is entirely running along conveyor belts that run in either or neither direction while dodging things sliding along or falling onto them, as well as avoiding the inexplicably placed Bottomless Pits.

Persona 2 has the Abandoned Factory which is full of random, still-operating conveyor belts. Some seem to be logically placed in loading areas for moving heavy items to and from storage, while others exist just to provide one-way paths blocking off sections of the factory, teasing you with their presence until you're high enough level to open the doors into those other sections.

Pokémon Some gyms and dungeons have tiles that send the character moving in a straight line until the next tile or obstacle. This led to much hilarity in Twitch Plays Pokémon, since the premise is essentially several thousand people using the same controller at once, and a single misstep undoes hours of tenuous cooperation.

Portal 2: Most conveyor belts have an ostensible function ("The Turret Redemption Lines are not rides. Please exit the Turret Redemption Line."), but one in particular, late in the game, is deliberately set up this way as a Death Trap. Or, as the Big Bad puts it, more of a "death option", as opposed to confronting him in his lair, where he will most definitely kill you. If you wait, he spends upwards of three or four minutes trying to convince you to fall for it, and is very pleasantly surprised if you do.

Revolution 1986: There are conveyor belts that can hinder the bouncing ball by moving it in the wrong direction.

Shantae snd the Pirate's Curse has a lot of these in the Abandoned Factory, placed around Spikes of Doom, Bottomless Pits, and falling ice blocks. However, some of them are actually helpful since you could use them to charge up Risky's Boots for an obstacle destroying Dash Attack.

Inverted in Hydrocity Zone. Sonic doesn't run on conveyor belts; he hangs from them, and uses them to get to places he couldn't reach without their presence.

Exaggerated in Death Egg Zone. Some of the conveyor belts are moving platforms which Sonic must take to progress, and they're designed to change direction whenever it's most inconvenient in order to push him into wall spikes or throw him into big ol' bug zappers.

Eggmanland from Sonic Unleashed had super-fast conveyor belts pushing you backward, as well as laser walls along the belts that you had to jump over or duck under. The bombs that were carried along the conveyor belts.

Casino Paradise Zone from Sonic Advance also has these. It's a rather strange place for conveyor belts, isn't it?

Casino Night Zone from Sonic the Hedgehog 2 was apparently planned to have these, as they can be seen in the most famous beta version of the game... wait a minute, they're in the final too, they just look different!

Final Egg from Sonic Adventure, anyone? THESE conveyor belts also tried to move you towards dangerous things, most of which were sharp.

One of the last two levels in the Game Gear spinoff game Tails Adventure had one or two of these at the start.

A couple fortresses in Super Mario Bros. 3 feature them. They freeze when a POW switch is activated.

All New Super Mario Bros. games have fortresses and castles with conveyor belts (and in New Super Mario Bros. 2 the castle of World Flower has switches that allow them to change their orientation). The Conveyor Belts that appear in Super Mario Maker are modeled from these games, and have been retroactively adapted for use in the styles of the older games. Also, in New Super Mario Bros. Wii, several ground pieces spin, and usually hide pipes from rushing players.

The level Bullet Bill Base in Super Mario 3D World has conveyor belts in the walls instead of the floors. They're designed so Mario and his friends can climb them with the Cat powerup.

Wario Land II has a few of these, mostly in the factory levels; as do Wario Land 4 (also in the factory levels, where they become more annoying when Wario has only one health left and tries to climb a set of conveyor belts with enemies on), and Wario Land: Shake It!.

Mario Power Tennis: One of the themed courts is made up of conveyor belts, which require you to constantly stay on the move and impart unexpected trajectories to bouncing balls.

Super Smash Bros. Brawl: This is one of the items placeable in custom maps, giving the player the option of placing them inconveniently when building a sadist stage.

TaskMaker: One of these shows up in the tutorial level. The game instructs you to go over to a switch to turn off the belt. Interestingly, this actual trap only shows up in one place in the game — and all it's blocking off is a small pile of Skeleton Keys amid loads of garbage.

Undertale: Hotland has a lot of these. Sometimes they're useful, as they help you get to places faster, but sometimes they're not. In some rooms, you're required to get to certain areas on one of these, but there are also lasers that will hurt you if you don't stay still, which is impossible to do on a conveyor belt. This actually gets lampshaded a few times.

Papyrus: CONVEYOR BELTS EVERYWHERE?? ARE YOU SERIOUS?

Later, after befriending Undyne...

Papyrus: LASERS ON CONVEYORS? ARE YOU SERIOUS???

Undyne: Hey, this reminds me of a puzzle idea.

Papyrus: OH MY GOD??? NO??? WHY???? I THOUGHT YOU HATED MAKING UP PUZZLES!!

Undyne: Yeah, but I love driving you crazy!

Non-Video Game Examples:

Animal Yokocho: Non-game example: in this anime, Mr. Yamanami fixes up Ami's room to be a jungle with a hot spring-sauna deep within. After Ami realizes that they've been walking an illogically long distance within her room, the camera zooms out to show that they'd been walking on a treadmill the whole time.

The board game Robo Rally takes place in a factory, so the belts have some reason to be there. However, some of them are arranged into swirling maelstroms of death which tip anything on them into bottomless chasms. (To say nothing of the pushers, crushers, lasers, and radioactive goo.)

Parodied in It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia. The gang is trying to stage a scene in which kittens on a conveyor belt are being taken toward a chopping knife. Before they can start filming, however, they break down into arguments about how unbelievable the premise is.

Community

Tropes HQ

TVTropes is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available from thestaff@tvtropes.org. Privacy Policy